Deals galore making the news

The need to reduce debt, cut costs and get bigger in an ever-fragmenting industry sparked a flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the media sector this year.

Regional television and radio company Southern Cross Media got the ball rolling in late January with its $770 million takeover offer for capital-city radio station operator Austereo Group.

The offer was the first big deal in the media sector for more than a year. It was not the last.

Kerry Stokes
revealed the $4.1 billion merger of Seven Media Group and West Australian Newspapers, both of which he controlled, in late February.

The merger gave Stokes a way to move $2 billion of debt out of the privately-owned Seven into the listed WA Newspapers, which was reborn as Seven West Media.

The deals continued as 2011 rolled on, with Foxtel announcing its long-expected takeover bid for regional pay TV company Austar United Communications (a bid yet to be approved by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) and Fairfax Media selling part of New Zealand online business Trade Me via an initial public offering.

Weak equities and advertising markets forced private equity firm CVC Asia Pacific to abandon plans to list Nine Entertainment Co. As the year ended, CVC was trying to convince its banks to restructure Nine’s $3.66 billion debt and convert some of it into equity.

At Ten Network, newish shareholder
Lachlan Murdoch
took the interim chief executive job when
Grant Blackley
was fired in late February.

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Murdoch went on to cut costs, remove senior executives, revamp the ailing digital channel One, and ditch failed programs such as the 6pm news and 6.30pm With George Negus. His poaching of Seven executive
James Warburton
to run Ten led to the year’s most entertaining legal battle and delayed Warburton’s arrival at Ten from July to January 1 next year.

Blackley was not the only senior media executive on the move this year.

Brett Chenoweth
started as APN News & Media’s new chief executive. David Malone quit as head of pay TV channel producer Premier Media Group and was replaced by Foxtel executive
Patrick Delany
. Malone later resurfaced as chief executive of V8 Supercars.

In early November, Murdoch announced the retirement of
John Hartigan
, who had run the local News Ltd operation for 11 years. Foxtel head
Kim Williams
replaced Hartigan and
Richard Freudenstein
– the News Ltd executive most people thought would succeed Hartigan – switched to the top job at Foxtel.